


To Be Read Like That

by AshCommaMan



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Aziraphale is mean and says things because he can't handle complicated emotions, Crowley is rightfully upset, First Kiss, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Second Kiss, goodnight america, lots of long time skips lol it's my favorite thing to do to torture people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 16:46:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19338538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshCommaMan/pseuds/AshCommaMan
Summary: "The years between their conversations stretched like the road to Heaven: endless, broken, the potholes patched over with good intentions. Their interactions, always out of necessity, never social, seemed to Aziraphale like water after a drought. And every time the phone sat in deafening silence it felt like punishment for his insubordination. Surely the Almighty was teaching him a lesson. How dare he love. How dare he love something likethat.So he shoveled those feelings deep inside himself so far he couldn’t feel them, and he buried them underneath books and scotch and distance. At least there, they couldn’t destroy him."





	To Be Read Like That

**Author's Note:**

> _To me_  
>  Love is a tattered old book  
> Read so many times the  
> Spine is bent and the  
> Pages are taped in. 
> 
> _Imagine_  
>  Being so well-loved  
> That you fray at the edges;  
> I want to be  
> Read like that.   
> \--An excerpt from a poem I wrote

Angels were created of love; they were born as a result of God’s loneliness in a vast, cold universe. To cope, She made beings who knew nothing but love, and who burned like the sun.

But love is so terribly close to fury, and jealousy, and pride. Many of the world’s atrocities have been justified through love, after all.

It was much safer, much simpler, to love objects rather than people. Books, for example, could not tempt you to Fall.

Aziraphale, therefore, loved much, but few.

He loved humanity, in a way that wasn’t exactly typical, even for angels. But he loved them in moderation. He couldn’t get enough of the _abstraction_ of humanity; but when forced to engage the reality, he found patience was not one of his virtues.

Though he would be loathe to admit it, patience was something afforded to one being in all the universe.

And this was the exact being whom all Aziraphale’s superiors and peers would insist was the _opposite_.

And yet they remained.

It became a one-sided thing, their partnership; it was a lumbering association where one half felt something distinctly different from friendship, and the other was none the wiser.

And sooner or later, despite his best efforts, it evened out.

 

The other shoe dropped in 1953.

They had finished a long night of drinking and dancing and experimenting with drugs, in a club on the outskirts of Dublin. And they were collapsed on a loveseat in a flashing room, arms around one another as they enjoyed the high.

And that was when Crowley bore the heart Aziraphale hadn’t even known he had.

He didn’t remember what happened next; thirty minutes later he was on the floor in his bookshop, sobbing harder than he ever had.

Crowley had tentatively tried to make contact a few days later, to close the gap his admission had wedged between them.

And Aziraphale had just broadened and deepened it.

 

He didn’t hear from him for fourteen years.

It shouldn’t have felt as long as it did. Fourteen years was nothing to them.

 

They made up, pretended as though nothing had happened. Even after that, there was a chill that held their friendship hostage. He had destroyed something sacred, in an attempt to flee his feelings, feelings spawned from a bag of books in burning wreckage. He had seen the apple and he’d burned the garden; everything beautiful and peaceful smoldered around him, and all that remained was the monument to his pain. Their pain.

 

The years between their conversations stretched like the road to Heaven: endless, the potholes patched over with good intentions. Their interactions, always out of necessity, never social, seemed to Aziraphale like water after a drought. And every time the phone sat in deafening silence it felt like punishment for his insubordination. Surely the Almighty was teaching him a lesson. How _dare_ he love. How dare he love something like _that_.

So he shoveled those feelings deep inside himself so far he couldn’t feel them, and he buried them underneath books and scotch and distance. At least there, they couldn’t destroy him.

 

And then there was the Antichrist. Crowley and Aziraphale became partners in crime, determined to stop the apocalypse before it destroyed everything they loved.

It was funny, how choosing humanity — choosing _themselves_ — over their very natures had brought them together.

After the apocalypse, everything changed. They had transcended the labels of “angel” and “demon,” had abandoned Heaven and Hell. They were closer than he could ever remember being. It was like Dublin had never happened.

But it _had_ , and he knew, beneath the dinners and the laughter and those soft golden eyes, that Crowley hadn’t forgotten.

Aziraphale supposed he could only hope that, like him, he had pushed his feelings to a place they would never surface.

Because even if he didn’t have to answer to Gabriel and Michael and the others anymore, he was still an Angel. He could still Fall. So he still had to be afraid. He had no other choice.

 

Six months had passed. They talked every day. They had lunch every Sunday. There were times when Crowley would spend the night in the bookshop, curled up on the sofa while Aziraphale read.

 

Now, they are sitting across from one another at a restaurant, one of those fancy places that charge you twenty dollars for a sliver of steak. Aziraphale doesn’t mind. He doesn’t have any need for money, he can just miracle up whatever he needs.

Crowley is staring around idly, waiting for him to finish. He almost never eats. Always orders coffee or tea or whiskey or wine.

He can’t help but feel as though _something_ has changed. Something beyond the obvious.

 

The _something_ reveals itself several weeks later, during a downpour.

Aziraphale is just closing up his shop when a black Bentley pulls up front.

He glances out the window into the gloom and frowns, eyebrows furrowed. What in _God’s name_ is Crowley doing out in this weather?

And what could he possibly want with him?

He opens the door before Crowley’s made it up the first step.

He begins to greet him, but the demon cuts him off. “Angel, there’s something I need to tell you. Something important. I can’t — I can’t hold it in any longer.”

Aziraphale already knows, but he asks anyway.

He stutters for a moment, as if trying to find the words. “You know what — bugger it all.”

In one long stride, he’s right there. And his hands are on his face and he’s _dripping wet_ and he wrenches the sunglasses off his face. And just like that they’re kissing, Crowley’s long fingers threading into his hair. And Aziraphale is so shocked he can’t think to do anything besides kiss him back, hands bunched up into the front of his shirt and on his toes.

He can’t tell how long they stay like that, locked in an embrace, never coming up for air because angels and demons don’t have a need for something as silly as oxygen. Crowley _is_ the oxygen.

Finally, though, Aziraphale remembers who he is — and, more importantly, what Crowley is.

He pulls away. Hard. He pushes against the demon’s chest and he stumbles backward, staring at him in shock and fear and _pain_. Oh God the pain.

“I — Crowley — you — you can’t. You can’t do this.”

The shock and fear dissolve into anger, but the pain remains. “ _I_ can’t do this?” he demands, but his voice is so quiet. Aziraphale almost wishes he would scream.

“I am an _angel_ —”

“And I’m a demon! Yes! I know! You’ve said this thousands of times! I thought that didn’t make a difference anymore!”

He doesn’t care that it’s _his_ bookshop. He doesn’t care that Crowley came in here with declarations of love on his lips. He doesn’t care that it’s storming. He has to run away. So he turns and runs out the still-open door, into the deluge, and spreads his pearly white wings. He takes off in panic, and flies for the first time in forty years. He flees from his feelings.

 

It’s two days before he returns to his bookshop. He finds it empty and locked up. He finds, too, a note. It’s neatly folded on his reading desk. It’s a scrawl that could only be Crowley’s.

 

_I’m sorry._

 

Two little words. _Two words_. That is all it takes.

And Aziraphale does something he’s never done before.

He tears up the note and he throws it in the fire. He shouts. He swears. He upends a lamp. He runs his hands along a table, throwing paper and books everywhere. And all the while he’s sobbing, he’s _screaming_. For a short period he is pain embodied.

And just like that, it’s over. The anger rushes out of him like water over a dam, leaving an empty lakebed.

He’s reduced to a sobbing mess in the corner, arms wrapped around himself, cheek against the wood paneling.

_He_ had done this. _He_ had driven Crowley away. And now he had to live with the consequences.

Surely, this was punishment.

 

Ten years passed in silence.

The world moved on, as the world often does. Anathema and Newton grew older. They married, but still stayed at Jasmine Cottage. Adam and the Them were adults now, but they still took walks in the woods they played in as children.

Heaven was silent, for the most part.

Occasionally, Gabriel or Michael would pop down. “Just to check up,” they said. He knew they were sending him disapproving glances when they thought he couldn’t see. But he knew they were too afraid of him to do much else.

They asked how Crowley was. Obviously to get a rise out of him.

He always told them that he was fine. They didn’t deserve to know his agony.

He still ran the bookshop. Books were passing quickly out of style, but he didn’t care. Not like he ever sold his books anyway.

He still drank cocoa, and read, and ate sushi.

But it all felt empty. The times they had spent apart before were nothing compared to this. Every time he saw someone with red hair, or a black car, or heard Queen, he was reminded of him. Reminded of the friendship he had ruined.

Soon, it all became too much.

It was a frigid evening in December. The cold and the darkness seemed to be drawing in on him. It leached all the warmth from him, and he felt terribly lonely.

It was then, finally, that he picked up the phone.

It went to voicemail.

 

He tried again, a few days later. Maybe he had just been out of the house. After all, Aziraphale hadn’t left a message.

Again, voicemail.

This time, he managed to get out words, choked with all the pain and loneliness and guilt. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into the receiver.

He should have said more, but he didn’t. He never did.

 

Three more calls. Still no answer.

A part of Aziraphale wonders if he has moved. Or gone back to Hell. Or died.

He doesn’t know if it’s concern or desperation that drives him to the flat.

As he stands outside the door, he wills his hand to knock, but it is fighting against him and winning. It would be so easy to continue on like this. The pain of the silence is more bearable than the pain of vulnerability.

He doesn’t know how, but he manages to knock. Three times, on the door.

Crowley opens it. His hair is new. It’s long, like it was when they met. Plaited, cascading over his shoulder.

Something changes, when he sees him.

They stand there, transfixed, for a moment. The space between them stretches on for kilometers, as impassable as the Red Sea without Moses.

“Aziraphale,” he says.

He had almost forgotten what his voice sounded like.

But his voice now, usually so silken and warm, is tired, ragged. Like he is teetering on the edge of a cliff. Too far out of reach for even Aziraphale to catch.

“Crowley. I… I wanted to apologize. I wanted to tell you… I can’t…” The words fail.

He doesn’t know how it happens, but they’re kissing.

That time in the bookshop was nothing compared to this. Here, it feels as though light and warmth are rushing back into him, filling him up and spilling out. The world turns to color and the desperation of Crowley’s lips against his makes his eyes well up with tears.

But he doesn’t _want_ to cry, because if he cries they have to pull apart.

He can’t stop them, though, and holy droplets slip down his face and pool where their skin touches.

Its sizzling brings Aziraphale back to himself. He pulls away but he can’t bring himself to separate completely. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Crowley hisses, so very snakelike, in pain. “Don’t be sorry,” he whispers. “You could never hurt me. I only feel you.”

A whimper escapes him, and it’s the most vulnerable he’s ever been and he hates it. He wants to run away, his instincts tell him to flee; but he refuses. No more running.

“Crowley, I — I love you. I love you so much. I’m sorry I never told you sooner.”

The demon hushes him, stroking the back of his head.

A tiny, painful tickle in his back moves him away. He rolls his shoulders and ruffles his left wing, trying to banish the discomfort. It doesn’t stop.

Instead, it grows and spreads, and he steps away from Crowley, reaching behind him as if he could grab the source of the pain and yank it away.

Then, a white-hot pain shoots up his spine and spreads to his wings. The force of it pushes him away from Crowley, and he gasps.

“Angel?” He takes a step forward.

“Crowley,” he replies, looking up at him. White light envelops him, and there’s pain. It’s burning, like fire lives under his skin. Something inside of him is breaking, disintegrating.

The demon’s eyes widen. His face is full of horror.

“Crowley, what’s happening to me?” he cries, reaching out for him as he falls to his knees.

He collapses as well, watching helplessly. “Aziraphale… I’m so sorry.”

He feels the floor opening up underneath him. The cement crumbles and shifts. It’s swallowing him. It feels like he’s being burnt alive. The pain is so intense that he can’t even think. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him.

And now he’s plummeting, impossibly fast, out of the light.

**Author's Note:**

> First of all: yes, I did steal a line from Avengers. The MCU doesn't deserve such a raw line  
> Second of all, I've been tossing the idea around in my head of rewriting this fic and expanding it into something more long-form, let me know ur thoughts!


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